France: Fillon slams own party for ‘anti-Semitic’ election cartoon

The cartoon, quickly taken down after it was posted on the party’s Twitter account on Friday, depicted the centrist Macron, a former banker, with a hooked nose and top hat, carrying a red sickle with which he was cutting a cigar. Associates and supporters from the French left and center were shown around him.

Fillon, a former prime minister, has lagged in polls amid allegations that he had secured fictitious public service jobs for his wife and children.

He was scathing Saturday in his criticism of the cartoon.

“The fight is tough but it must remain dignified,” he said in a statement, vowing not to “tolerate that his own party is broadcasting caricatures containing the codes of anti-Semitic propaganda.”

He urged disciplinary measured be taken against any party officials responsible for the post.

From the Macron camp, the candidate’s spokesman Benjamin Griveaux called it “extremely worrying” that the caricature “draws on the anti-Semitic imagination.”